Mad Gods & Englishmen

A Fantasy

Ian Armer

Winchester, UK
Washington, USA

First published by Roundfire Books, 2013

Roundfire Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK

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Text copyright: Ian Armer 2012

ISBN: 978 1 84694 953 1

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The rights of Ian Armer as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Design: Stuart Davies

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For Jessica

It is better to follow no saint than six.

Indian Proverb

Foreword

by Anthony Peake

Hollywood. The very name evokes images of sun-drenched vistas, beautiful people in open-top cars cruising down the wide, palm lined streets, of movie stars and fortunes being made behind every shiny façade; a place where dreams come true. However this is a facsimile, a simulacrum as French philosopher Jean Baudrillard would term it. The real Hollywood is found in the run-down bars and the flop houses frequented by those that the American Dream has passed by on its way down Sunset Boulevard. For these individuals Hollywood is a hard, stark place where survival depends upon quick wits, and even quicker fists. This is the Hollywood of James Ellroy, Horace McCoy, Steve Fisher and Charles Bukowski. These writers knew the real Hollywood because they experienced it first-hand. In their novels they used the dialogue of the gutter to explain the inner- life of their characters, words that accurately reflected the sordid world they describe. Not for them the slick witticisms of the screenwriters but more the blunt power of an expletive-ridden eruption of bile and venom.

That Hollywood consists of a world superimposed upon another world is central to Ian Armer ’s debut novel, Mad Gods and Englishmen. His central character, private detective Tommy Storm, is one of the under-achievers surviving on his wits and little else in this unforgiving environment. He drinks too much, treats women as simple gratification devices, and is well on the road to his own personal hell. However the Hollywood created by Armer is more than simply another re-tread of the classic noir detective fiction. This is a world where reality starts to blur at the edges and another, hidden, universe begins to appear. Soon the two superimposed worlds of Hollywood are being invaded by another world, a world more real than the simulacra ...